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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fastpathguru who wrote (255407)	8/9/2008 3:40:24 AM
From: wbmw	Respond to of 275872

Re: I'd bet anything that something "special" was done to get the "top selling PC game of all time" to run with barely acceptable performance on the G45. Indeed this is most likely the case, but not in the way that you think. It was likely in the form of a full time engineer or two dedicated towards optimizing the kinds of shader routines found in that particular game. It's the same thing ATI and nVidia do, but they have an entire army of driver writers who do it all the time. Intel's driver team is pretty weak by comparison. Hopefully, they've staffed the Larrabee driver team much stronger. Re: Second, since you're setting the bar so low for the masses, (i.e. "G45 is good enough for the proles who just want to run WOW") why be snobby about the processor? Won't a dirt cheap dual-core from AMD (or Intel) be perfectly fine for all the proles who just want to surf the web and get email? I guess you bring up a good point, fpg, but it's not like this is the first time someone has asked whether anyone needs a faster CPU. I look at it from two different ways: 1. From the perspective of graphics processing, it's good for games and no other useful workload (today!). So if you're not interested in games - either because you are a corporate buyer, or just a consumer who doesn't play games - then you don't care about it in the first place. And if you do care about games, if you care enough, you'll buy a discrete card in the first place. In order to make the battle about integrated graphics and the 3D gaming performance it delivers, you are pretty much talking about the seam of gaming consumers that exists between the "don't care" or super casual market (people who play Diner Dash or other flash/Internet based games), and enthusiasts who demand playable frame rates on today's and tomorrow's games. IMHO, most people are either in one camp, or the other. Either they are satisfied with casual gaming, in which case even Intel's integrated graphics is just fine, or they are demanding excellent performance, in which case not even AMD's integrated graphics are enough. 2. In terms of the CPU, it's the same thing, but instead of just gaming workloads, the CPU affects EVERYTHING. So there isn't a single consumer - either in the corporate world, or at home - who won't see better performance with faster processors. Maybe you can argue that the performance improvements are unnoticeable if you are just surfing the web, but that's for each individual to decide. At least the data seems to agree with you - that the vast majority of consumers these days are buying the bare minimum in order to surf the net and write email. That's one of the reasons why Atom is selling like hot cakes. But there's still a certain volume of buyers who demand more, and that's where Intel earns all of their margins. So in the end, if Intel is missing a seam of the graphics market that demands more than what the G45 can offer, but wants it for cheaper than a low end discrete card, then perhaps AMD will get some table scraps from that. But I don't think it will include a massive shift in processor sales, just so that buyers can ensure they have AMD integrated graphics inside their PCs. I'll maintain that most people just don't care.